Cooley’s reputation in the academic community is hardly stellar: in the most recent USNWR rankings, the school received a peer-review score of 1.4, and a lawyers/judges-review score of 1.8 (both out of 5). The school also has one of the highest student-to-faculty ratios in the country, at 23.5. This last statistic contributes to the idea of Cooley as a “degree mill” – a school that denies its students the personal experience offered at many smaller schools. The curve at Cooley is very tough - so much so that 22.4% of 1Ls and 14.5% of 2Ls either choose to leave or flunk out. Even 3Ls are not safe, as 14 of them were forced to leave last year.

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In regards to finding a job I have known people that found employment from Cooley I even worked for a guy that went there. He was pretty doing well for himself.

I have no doubt that people who graduated from Cooley 20 years ago were able to find jobs. My own father went to Hamline in MN, another 4th tier, and he's been extremely successful. However, that has very little bearing on the job market today, which is absurdly oversaturated and which punishes all but the most exceptional of students. I'm not saying it's impossible to find a job with a Cooley degree, just very difficult, and finding a good job will be all but impossible for most.

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It is pretty much impossible to be a lawyer unless you attend law school.

Does that mean it is possible to become one without it? I guess technically you don't have to go to law school to sit the bar, but good luck...

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The name of your school generally will not help you at all considering 75% of ABA schools are not tier 1.

...that would lend more credence to the idea that a name would help you, since there are so many subpar schools. Try and tell me having a Harvard, or even Michigan degree, won't get you points for name recognition alone.

The article says 22% either flunked out or choose to leave. Not that there is a mandatory kick out rate. Again what school would want to get rid of paying students. It would make 0 sense. If someone appears incapable of passing the bar the school has a duty to fail them out. If someone chooses to leave the school that is there choice they are paying customers and nobody is forcing anyone to attend law schools.

You are absolutely right Harvard & Michigan have GREAT name recognition. If you are in the top 25% of schools I think it does have a huge bearing. My point was that outside of the top 50 schools whether you went to Hamline, which might be tier 3 will not make you stand out over Suffolk tier 4. For 75% of schools the name does not mean anything outside of the top 50 or so schools most people have never heard of them. I was not trying to say that Harvard or any T14 school will not open doors for you.

In regards to your oversaturization argument show me an industry that is not over saturated. The population has grown exponentially since your father went to law school. I have posted on other threads MBA's, M.D.'s, nurses, teachers, etc posting how difficult the job market is. Not to mention there is something called a GLOBAL recession. When something is referred to as global that means more than just the legal field.

Jobs are competitive and every industry goes through ups and downs. I could post an article about how hard it is now or has been in the past for any profession out there. Hard as it is to believe, but people want to get paid to do something. No matter what job you have you can be replaced and markets are oversatured that is just life. As the national and world population continues to grow it will become even more competitive.

It probably is on the low end. Again I do not think Cooley is anybody's first choice, but you can succeed if it is what you want to do. If you constantly say things are impossible or criticize everyone's decision then nobody will do anything. I don't think anybody anywhere has been told you are amazing and everything will work out. You have to be able to handle adversity particularity if you want to be a lawyer and particularly if you go to a lower end school.

The article says 22% either flunked out or choose to leave. Not that there is a mandatory kick out rate.

Good point, except I never actually said anything about a mandatory anything. All I said was... know what, never mind, I'll save myself the trouble.

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nearly a quarter of all 1Ls leave or flunk out every year.

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You are absolutely right Harvard & Michigan have GREAT name recognition. If you are in the top 25% of schools I think it does have a huge bearing. My point was that outside of the top 50 schools whether you went to Hamline, which might be tier 3 will not make you stand out over Suffolk tier 4. For 75% of schools the name does not mean anything outside of the top 50 or so schools most people have never heard of them. I was not trying to say that Harvard or any T14 school will not open doors for you.

Ok, agreed.

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In regards to your oversaturization argument show me an industry that is not over saturated. The population has grown exponentially since your father went to law school. I have posted on other threads MBA's, M.D.'s, nurses, teachers, etc posting how difficult the job market is.

And? I'm not seeing how the state of the medical profession is in any way relevant to a legal profession.

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Not to mention there is something called a GLOBAL recession. When something is referred to as global that means more than just the legal field.

Thanks for defining that for me. If I weren't an Economics major, I might have been confused.

Just for your own clarification, the so-called "Global" recession is neither global nor is it even occurring any longer. The U.S. hasn't been in recession since June 2009 ( http://www.nber.org/cycles/sept2010.html ) and many countries (Germany, China, and Brazil, to name a few) have seen fantastic growth over the last several years.

Again, irrelevance to the max. If you wanted to find an article about the difficulty of lawyers finding jobs, it would be no farther than a quick google search away.[/quote]

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Jobs are competitive and every industry goes through ups and downs. I could post an article about how hard it is now or has been in the past for any profession out there. Hard as it is to believe, but people want to get paid to do something. No matter what job you have you can be replaced and markets are oversatured that is just life. As the national and world population continues to grow it will become even more competitive.

This is my entire point! Law is such an oversaturated market that in order to succeed, its more important than ever to get a good education and really sell yourself. Having a law degree in and of itself no longer makes you a desirable commodity like it did 20 years ago. You need to go above and beyond if you want to make it against such competition.

I tend to look at the positives not the negatives in terms of the legal marketplace. Look at it from this standpoint: Society will probably become more and more litigious as the years go by. History has proven this to be true. Next, as the middle class people no longer enjoy jobs such as 25 dollar an hour janitors or non skilled laborers making 50k a year- these middle class and also lower income people will certainly want to become claimants against someone to pay the bills (goverment, former employer, insurance company). Lawyers will certainly have to be involved in either of these situations.

Again what school would want to get rid of paying students. It would make 0 sense. If someone appears incapable of passing the bar the school has a duty to fail them out. If someone chooses to leave the school that is there choice they are paying customers and nobody is forcing anyone to attend law schools.

You are absolutely right Harvard & Michigan have GREAT name recognition. If you are in the top 25% of schools I think it does have a huge bearing. My point was that outside of the top 50 schools whether you went to Hamline, which might be tier 3 will not make you stand out over Suffolk tier 4. For 75% of schools the name does not mean anything outside of the top 50 or so schools most people have never heard of them. I was not trying to say that Harvard or any T14 school will not open doors for you.

You answered your own question. What school would hope to oust a paying student? Any school that cares about its bar passage rate. Even the Tier 4 have standards when it comes to that. As you said, a school doesn't want a student who in all likelihood won't pass the bar. And it's not like there's a shortage of wannabe law school students willing to throw down their money to replace the riffraff.

And of course going to Hamline won't make you stand out over students at Suffolk and the other way around. They're not in the same market. Employers aren't going to be choosing between students from both schools, because grads from those schools are not trying to get jobs in the same place. No one in their right mind would plan on getting a job in the Twin Cities with their degree from Suffolk. If they wanted to work in Minneapolis, they would have gone to Hamline to begin with. The tiers are better at distinguishing the schools within one regional market. For example, the Twin Cities have 4 law schools, a T1, a T2, a T3, and a T4 (Minnesota, William Mitchell, St. Thomas, and Hamline). And on a resume, does William Mitchell look better than Hamline, even though WM is barely T2 at #98 and was T3 last year? Yes it does. So the name of the school does matter in a regional market even outside the first tier. And in Philly, Temple (a T2 and #75) will get you big points over Rutgers-Camden or Widener. i

I highly doubt it most lawyers do not even look at rankings. They know what schools are elite and they have heard of, but I find it very unlikely a hiring partner in New Jersey for example will say will Bob Smith went to Rutgers while Sally Smith went to Seton Hall. Seton Hall is ranked 78th and Bob should get the interview. Neither school is that impressive there are elite schools and non-elite schools. If you go to either Seton Hall or Rutgers for example they will look to the student's grades, work experience, writing sample etc. The difference between being 4th or 5th means very little at least in my experience. Of course if someone went to Penn or Harvard Seton Hall or Rutgers gets blown out of the water.

Law firms and judges care once again how the school is ranked in a particular region. What's the #1, #2, #3, etc. school in a particular market - that's what they care about. Or you can say that they create that hierarchy themselves, considering that the opinion of law firms and judges is responsible in part for each law school's ranking. Yea there's a big difference between Penn and Temple, but there's also a big difference between Temple and Widener, and the people who are hiring in Philly do care about that difference.

I assume you're talking about the NYC market, because I can't fathom why you'd go to the Newark market as an example for anything. NYC in itself is an anomaly having a ridiculous amount of law schools that count it as their primary market. If you are talking about Newark, well Seton Hall and Rutgers-Newark are ranked only 8 places apart at the center of the 2nd Tier. They are peer schools if there ever were any. The difference in ranking is so marginal that of course neither would have a natural leg up on the other.

Plus. the only way someone from Penn would be competing with those from Rutgers-Camden and Seton Hall would be in the NYC market, which brings us back to what I said about NYC. There are a ridiculous amount of schools concentrated in that area, so while you can easily say that Cornell is viewed better than St. John's and that Brooklyn is better than Touro, of course there's not much to be said about the difference between Rutgers, Seton Hall, Brooklyn and St. John's. But most markets don't have nearly that many schools.

I tend to look at the positives not the negatives in terms of the legal marketplace. Look at it from this standpoint: Society will probably become more and more litigious as the years go by. History has proven this to be true. Next, as the middle class people no longer enjoy jobs such as 25 dollar an hour janitors or non skilled laborers making 50k a year- these middle class and also lower income people will certainly want to become claimants against someone to pay the bills (goverment, former employer, insurance company). Lawyers will certainly have to be involved in either of these situations.

Wow. Really? You're staking your future on class warfare by way of litigation?